In the Dark with the Duke by Christi Caldwell Page 0,108
. somehow changed?”
Lila didn’t even deign to lift her head from those pages he’d written all night long.
“It . . . has not.”
She offered him only more of her silence.
Hugh shifted his weight back and forth over his legs. Of all the questions she might have asked, or comments she might have made about the gift he’d given, that particular one had not been imagined. And it also spoke to how small a person he was that he’d expected she would, if not be grateful, at least be enthused by what he’d assembled. Anything, really, more than this . . . silence.
At last, Lila snapped the book shut with a punctilious little snap. “No.” She held it out.
Frowning, he stared at his notes in her hand. “No, what?” he asked, ignoring the small leather volume in her fingers.
“No, thank you?”
His scowl deepened. Was she jesting? “I wasn’t concerned with damned manners.”
Lila lifted a single eyebrow. “What were you expecting?” she asked, so very placid in her query.
He tried again. “I don’t understand. I thought this was what you wanted?” He’d forever recall the light in her eyes as she’d prattled on about her vision.
“This is,” she confirmed. “But I don’t want your notes, Hugh. I don’t want your lessons or suggestions or . . . any of it. Not when you’ve been clear how you feel about fighting.” And as if she’d been burnt by his book—the one he’d given to her—she dropped it in the center of an inlaid table.
“But . . .” Confusion. Embarrassment. Regret. They all swirled, searching for supremacy at Lila’s pointed rejection. To give his hands something to do, he adjusted the silk white cravat at his throat . . . which served only to highlight once more just how out of his element he was. How he may as well have been moving upon a different planet from Lila March.
As if there’d been any further confirmation needed.
There was a rap at the door.
“Not now, Adelle,” Lila called, and the footfalls of the servant outside the door retreated and then faded altogether. Lila looked back to Hugh. “When you came that night, I spoke about us working together because that was what I wanted. I wished to learn from you about how to run a venture you have expertise in. About how to fight and train.” She shook her head. “I didn’t want your assistance . . . this way.”
There was no help for it. He’d never understand women. “What way?” he entreated, feeling flipped upside down.
“Born of pity,” she cried out. “I don’t want your damned pity.” Her chest heaved. When she again spoke, she did so in a low voice. “That isn’t why I told you . . . what I told you, yesterday. That isn’t why I shared Peterloo and every dark moment of that day.”
His stomach muscles clenched as they invariably did from the mere thought . . . and now, in this case, the mention of that place.
Lila stomped across the room.
He registered her retreat. Where . . . ?
“Now, I thank you for coming and for offering to do something so hateful to you.” She grabbed the door handle and pulled the panel open hard. “However, I must politely decline your request.”
Politely and forcefully.
Hugh struggled for a response. None of this had gone as he’d planned. Never, having come here, had he thought she’d reject his offer. He tried again. “I’m offering you what you want, Lila. I’ll help you with the venture that means so much to you.”
Lila’s lips turned up in a sad rendering of a smile. “Oh, Hugh. I’d not have you do this. Not when you abhor violence as you do. No, I’d not have you take this on . . . for me.”
All he’d ever known was people using him to achieve their own ends. This, someone putting him first, was something completely unfamiliar. Foreign.
And he didn’t know what to do or how to respond.
He joined her at the door. “Lila—”
She pressed a fingertip to his lips, silencing him. “Thank you, Hugh. But no,” she repeated with greater insistence.
She’d been very firm in her resolve, and in her request that he leave. As such, he should do just that. After all, who was he to force his unwanted company upon her? Particularly, given their shared pasts, since he had no right.
And yet, he couldn’t, not as long as she believed pity was what drove him.